A470 Soaring: November 2013

About A470 Soaring

This is the blog for a few guys who spend their time flying radio controlled gliders, or slope soarer's, from the many and varied slopes around SE Wales.

This usually begins at the northern end of Cardiff, driving north up the A470 up to the Heads of the Valley's and the southern fringe of the Brecon Beacons. But the A470 road continues its windy way all the way to N Wales.

There are many slopes available for most wind directions, the most famous being the area between Nant-y-Moel and Treorchi known as The Bwlch, which has some of the best slopes and flying in Europe with many F3F competitions being held there each year and visited by many fliers from Europe and around the world. At 1500 feet (450m) above sea level, there is usually more wind than not, and certainly more than at sea level.

If you require any further information, are new to slope soaring or are visiting the area, please contact Steve at steve.houghton59@gmail.com . I look forward to hearing from you.

Take a look at Page 2 (look below and to the left here) for Google maps of our most popular Flying Sites.

Thursday, 28 November 2013

Bwlch - VR98

Sunday 24th November 2013 - I met up with Mark, Chris and Clive on the VR98 slope at the Bwlch. This is the north facing slope and today the wind was very light, but as with most of the slopes on this fantastic site, you only need a whiff of a breeze to get a plane in the air.

This slope has the shortest landing zone of all the six slopes with a road just behind the flying area, so landing is achieved by coming in low from the right hand side generally and coming in across the wind, tuning into the wind at the last minute. This can be a bit tricky at times and can take several attempts, but at least the ground is covered in very long, soft grass for when you need to dump the plane down unceremoniously.

In this video Clive is flying his Ceres and Chris his Toucan.

Fochriw

Friday 22nd November 2013 - Mark and I met up on Fochriw, a Heads of the Valley's slope close to New Tredegar. This is a north east facing slope that offers fantastic flying with very little turbulence and a good landing zone, but the big bonus, particularly in winter, is that this is a park and fly site, (because you can get into your car for a warm up). When you watch the video, I was filming next to my car, which was about 30m from the edge of the slope.

In this video, Mark is flying his Cappuccino, wind was about 24mph and ever so slightly off the slope from the north.